Survey of English Place-Names

Historical Forms

• Reche 1216–31 Rams c.1350 Ass 1276 Ass 1287 BHRSiii.24 1321

• Rache 1276 Ass

• Rach 1669 NQi

Etymology

That the word reche could in ME be used in a topographical sense seems to be clear from this place and from Reach (C). It is difficult however at first to see what they have in common.Skeat says of the latter place that old maps show that it stood at the very verge of the waters of the fen-lands, on a round projection of the old shore. Reach (Beds) lies on rising ground in a shallow valley, the village lying along the road which runs up the valley. Skeat takes the word to mean a reach or extension of the land in the Cambridgeshire p.n., but there is really no evidence for such a use of 'reach' in Middle English. Reach in the sense 'that which reaches or stretches' is no older than the 16th cent.What Skeat did not notice, however, is that Reach lies just at the end of the Devil's Dyke. That dyke indeed has served its purpose when it reaches the edge of the Fens; in early days it must however have formed a natural path of approach to Reach, which to this day is singularly inaccessible.

There is an ON  rák , 'stripe, streak,' which is the source of the English rake , 'way, path, narrow path up a cleft or ravine,' and there is a cognate rack from a different ablaut-grade, meaning 'narrow path or track,' of such wide distribution in the south and west of England that it must be of native English rather than Scandinavian origin (v. rake , sb. 2 and rack , sb. 1 in NED and rack in EDD). Possibly we may note also Wiltshire rake , 'row of houses,' EDD. Corresponding to either of these words there may in OE have been an OE  rǣc or ræcc , jo -stems with consequent palatalisation of the c . Either of these would account for ME  reche or rache such as we find in the early forms of Reach. The possibility of such a derivative receives some measure of confirmation from such a noun as rache , ratch (rarely reach , race ) used in English of a white streak on a horse's face, in which we note the same sense of a narrow line (NED s.n. rache , sb. 2, race , sb. 5). It may well be, if this etymology is correct, that the Bedfordshire place was so called because it lay along a steep narrow road running up a valley, and the Cambridgeshire place from the Devil's Dyke itself which was used as a reach or path.